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Watched several episodes yesterday on TVLand. There was one episode where I believe the main story was Marcia, Peter, and Jan working at Haskell's Ice Cream Parlor. The B-story had to do with Alice and Mr. Brady being on diets. I'm not sure if Mrs. Brady was on one or not, but I know Mike and Alice were. Okay, I can understand Alice being on a diet. But Mike? No one else in the series ever came close to being overweight that I can recall. Certainly don't think Mike was.

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I saw a bit of the Very Brady Sequel movie today. My God...it was like two retro movies in one. I'd forgotten how...90s all the non-Bradys were. Grunge! Pagers! Grunge! David Spade! Grunge! I was impressed that in addition to all the references to the show they worked in, they managed to get the animated Bradys in there too. One interesting I noticed was that one of the lifeguards who snarks on Greg in the pool scene is the guy who plays Diggle on Arrow.

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I saw a bit of the Very Brady Sequel movie today. My God...it was like two retro movies in one. I'd forgotten how...90s all the non-Bradys were. Grunge! Pagers! Grunge! David Spade! Grunge! I was impressed that in addition to all the references to the show they worked in, they managed to get the animated Bradys in there too. One interesting I noticed was that one of the lifeguards who snarks on Greg in the pool scene is the guy who plays Diggle on Arrow.

I just saw the Johnny Bravo episode yesterday, and it features the song and dance "Good Time Music," the same song the Brady kids jump up and start singing on the plane to Hawaii in the Very Brady Sequel movie. Now I can't get that damn song out of my head!

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Jan left teaching at some point and became an architect. She and her husband were in the process of splitting up right at the time of a Very Brady Christmas. But spending the night in the spare drawer (please don't ask) at the Brady home brought them back together.

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Yes. Mickey spilled the beans to Mike and he fixed Wally up with a friend who owned a toy company. Tyler Toys I think?

I could be making this up but I think Marcia and Wally ran into each other and she just asked him to marry her right after they met. Marcia was jealous because Jan was getting married. In the theme song to the short lived Brady Brides series I thought there was a line like 'Marcia was lonely, then along came Wally'. But apparently that was something else I made up because I found it on YouTube. The video quality is not the best but the song is hilarious.

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Jan got engaged to ubernerd. They went to tell her parents. For some reason Ma and Pa Brady suddenly went all 18th century on them and insisted that they had to wait because Marcia as the oldest should get married first. Because that would do so much for Jan's self-esteem, not to mention the utter stupdity of the idea. Jan complained to Marcia who felt bad at holding up her sister's wedding since she wasn't dating anyone. Well, then she met Wally somehow. She cried on his shoulder how unfair her parents were. They had a worldwind romance (7 days), got engaged and lived happily ever after. Well, except for Marcia's bout with alcoholism when they brought the whole blooming Brady Bunch back for a weekly show.

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Ehh teenage girls. I know I was one once. We shall not discuss what MY room walls were covered in. Of course, your average girl does not have your latest celeb crush showing up on your doorstep. Mostly we were content to have an picture that was signed by an assistant and a form letter telling how wonderful we were for writing.

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During the TVLand marathon this afternoon (which was supposed to be a tribute to Ann B. Davis/Alice), I happened to catch the ep where the Bradys are recruited in the supermarket parking lot by a hippy dippy, free spirited TV commercial director/producer, to do the TV commercial for "the new & improved Safe laundry detergent".

In the course of the ep, the Bradys end up somehow taking acting lessons/getting acting tips from an actress named "Myrna" (pronounced "Meer-na") something or other, who tells them all about needing "motivation" when performing a scene... A tip the Bradys then use on the day of filming, thereby ruining the "natural" quality the director/producer (who it turned out had worked with Myrna before) had liked about the family in the first place.

Having read/heard about all the tension between Robert Reed & Sherwood Schwartz on the set (because of how Reed felt certain scenes should be played/shouldn't even have occurred in certain episodes/certain entire plots wouldn't have even happened in reality to a family like the Bradys, & Schwartz's attitude back to him was, basically, "You play what we write for you & you play it the way you're directed to...PERIOD), I wonder now if that whole "Myrna" plot wasn't meant as a dig at Reed's attitude towards Schwartz?

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I think you could be right- especially since the way the Bradys acted 'naturally' on the commercials was almost EXACTLY the same as when they used 'Meerna's' techniques. I never understood how Carol had become acquainted with Meerna in the first place,though. Even her being a friend of a friend meant that that middle linke would have had to have been REALLY kooky. LOL

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There seemed to be a GREAT deal that went unexplained re Carol in addition to how she knew these kooky folks. Like did she just sponge off her folks [the Tylers] for the 'few years' after her marriage to Mr. Martin ended and did Mr. Martin die or did they divorce? They never said on the air! I tend to side with the idea that they divorced if for no other reason than the fact that she insisted the girls change THEIR surname to Brady as soon as she wed Mike while I think had Mr. Tyler been someone who'd died, she'd have mourned him and wanted the girls keep that surname until their own marriages [as things usually went back in the day]. Also, why didn't she, her daughters or any of her side of the family ever interact with the Tylers after she married Mike? Apart from one time she said they couldn't babysit The Bunch in 'The Babysitters' due to them being out of town, neither she nor any of the above even refer to the Tylers again much less interact when visiting the Bradys.

Oh well, it still was a fun show even if they all needed an Alice to keep things going! LOL

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I recently re-watched the pilot ['The Honeymoon'] and was amazed on what I didn't pick up on when I first saw it as a kid- like the fact that Mike and the boys lived in a one-story house that seemed would have barely had room for a newlywed couple- much less 'four men' and Alice. Of course when the series started all nine were in the iconic two-story , three bathroom [with all six kids grudgingly sharing one but never considering using the folks' or Alice's bathroom] pad. Also if the Brady men drove to the Tyler house with Tiger, how did Alice get there before the nuptuals since she didn't drive?

But the funniest thing is that I remember when I was a kid, I thought both Mike and Carol were way too harsh on their kids during the Tiger-Fluffy Wedding Feud but as an adult I now I think Carol WAS right to try to get the girls to 'stop that screaming' [which really wasn't helping solve anything ] and Mike WAS right to tell the boys to remind them to 'put that dog back in the car' (even though Mike needed to kick himself for letting the boys guilt him into bringing Tiger along in the first place). Also, back then, I thought it was perfectly logical for them to invite the entire Bunch on the honeymoon to make up for things but now I wonder where the other seven were supposed to squeeze in with the parents taking up the only bed!

Anyone else surprised how they've grown to side more with the folks than with the kids? LOL

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Did we ever learn how Mike and Carol met? I don't think it was ever discussed, so it was probably scandalous. Maybe the Bradys and the Martins all attended a swingers key party, and Mr. Martin and the first Mrs. Brady ran off together. Mike and Carol were left to their own devices...

Well, yeah, probably not, but Carol did always wear short short skirts--and that twinkle in her eye...

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No. The boys' mother was dead. We learned that in the pilot, when Bobby was looking at her picture and went to put it away, so as not to offend Carol. Mike told him he didn't need to do that because Carol didn't want him to forget his mother.

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I'm actually horrified they made the dog stay in the car. Maybe they kept up that practice and that's how Tiger died.

oceanblue,

Considering that automatic windows [which is how Tiger made his escape] were VERY much a novelty for cars back then, it would be most likely that the car ALSO had A/C- and they WERE Bradys so I can't imagine they'd have left a dog inside a hot, unventilated car. Still, if the automatic window worked, that likely means that Mike kept the car ON with the keys in the ignition! Lucky that no car thieves tried to drive off with their car during the ceremony! LOL OK, if you can believe the possibility that Tiger was inside a nice air-conditioned car, would you STILL think it was a bad move on Mike's part to try to keep Tiger there?

Oh, as for Tiger's actual demise? Barry Williams has said that while shooting the First Season Episode 'Katchoo' [where Jan has the fakest sneezes outside grade school plays which gets everyone thinking she's ALLERGIC to Tiger], the original Tiger got run over by a florist truck- and the dog trainers subbed a vague lookalike who was so inadequate for the part that they had to nail the collar to the floor and strap Fake Tiger in it just to get him to sit still while the Bradys said their 'goodbyes'!

GH Scorpions Rule,

Yeah, we know Mike was definitely a widower but nothing ever was mentioned whether the Martin union ended in divorce or Mr. Martin's death. We can speculate all we want on how they met but I think since Carol occasionally was a reporter, she may have met Mike doing a story on one of his projects- or maybe they met in the PTA .

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For a joke, Molly Webber, a plain Jane, is nominated for hostess on Banquet Night. The practical joke sends Marcia on a mission to transform Molly into a knockout. Marcia succeeds, but discovers she may have succeeded too much when Marcia finds herself running against Molly

This was always one of my favorites because it taught so many important life lessons

Power corrupts

Gratitude means answering the question, what have you done for me lately?

To be popular, someone else must be unpopular

Achieving your ambition means crushing someone else's dreams

A pity that they offset the message with a happy ending.

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Watching the episode where Carol writes an article about her family to a woman's magazine. It's funny but most of the other episodes I've seen multiple times I know it by heart but this one I haven't seen as much of for some reason so I'm not that familiar with it. There's actually a continuity from previous eps where Peter comes in with a black eye because he's been fighting with Buddy Hinton again!

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Also, why didn't she, her daughters or any of her side of the family ever interact with the Tylers after she married Mike? Apart from one time she said they couldn't babysit The Bunch in 'The Babysitters' due to them being out of town, neither she nor any of the above even refer to the Tylers again much less interact when visiting the Bradys.

Wasn't there an episode where the boys' grandfather or great-granfather came to visit at the same time as the girls' grandmother or great-grandmother and the kids tried to fix them up on a date? IIRC, Robert Reed and Florence Henderson played the old folks, dressed up as geezers with wigs, makeup and the required old people clothing.

There was also the episode where Jan discovers she looks exactly like her great aunt when the aunt was her age. When the aunt, who the kids have never met, comes to visit Jan is devastated because the aunt is unattractive and quirky looking and Jan fears she'll grow up to look that way. The great aunt was played by Imogene Coca. In typical Brady fashion all end well as Jan sees that despite her unusual looks the aunt has lived a full adventurous life persuing foreign travel and being friends with many foreign dignateries, king, etc. I think in the episode the aunt gets a phone call from Henry Kissenger - wow, does THAT ever date this show, LOL!

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Wasn't there an episode where the boys' grandfather or great-granfather came to visit at the same time as the girls' grandmother or great-grandmother and the kids tried to fix them up on a date? IIRC, Robert Reed and Florence Henderson played the old folks, dressed up as geezers with wigs, makeup and the required old people clothing.

There was also the episode where Jan discovers she looks exactly like her great aunt when the aunt was her age. When the aunt, who the kids have never met, comes to visit Jan is devastated because the aunt is unattractive and quirky looking and Jan fears she'll grow up to look that way. The great aunt was played by Imogene Coca. In typical Brady fashion all end well as Jan sees that despite her unusual looks the aunt has lived a full adventurous life persuing foreign travel and being friends with many foreign dignateries, king, etc. I think in the episode the aunt gets a phone call from Henry Kissenger - wow, does THAT ever date this show, LOL!

happykitteh,

That was part of the point I was making re the Ignored Tylers- not only did the Bradys themselves never seem to interact with them again after the wedding, but neither did their OWN relatives including Grandma Connie Hutchins [Carol's grandmother and Mrs. Tyler's mother], Aunt Jenny [sister to one of them but unclear WHICH side of that branch of the family] and even Cousin Oliver [their other grandchild]. All these folks visited the Bradys but didn't even so much as make a reference to the folks linking them to said Bradys. Of course, it should be noted that when Cousin Oliver was dumped on the Bradys, his parents just dropped him off and didn't even leave the car to say goodbye to him or greet any of the Bradys [including Carol, Oliver's dad's sister].

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That was part of the point I was making re the Ignored Tylers- not only did the Bradys themselves never seem to interact with them again after the wedding, but neither did their OWN relatives including Grandma Connie Hutchins [Carol's grandmother and Mrs. Tyler's mother], Aunt Jenny [sister to one of them but unclear WHICH side of that branch of the family] and even Cousin Oliver [their other grandchild]. All these folks visited the Bradys but didn't even so much as make a reference to the folks linking them to said Bradys. Of course, it should be noted that when Cousin Oliver was dumped on the Bradys, his parents just dropped him off and didn't even leave the car to say goodbye to him or greet any of the Bradys [including Carol, Oliver's dad's sister].

I'm not disputing you point, just trying to remember if they ever had any contact with relatives.

I could not stand that Oliver kid. So annoying! No wonder his parents did a drop and run, LOL! Why did they leave him with the Brady's? I can't remember that part.